In the arms of make believe
by Kali Cephirot
Summary: They're Clovers. Perhaps pretend is all they can do...... GingetsuxRan, ONE SHOT, FINISHED.


**In the Arms of Make Believe.**

C's fingers are careful and certain as they wrap bandages around his wrist. Gingetsu isn't surprised that he learned to do this just from watching as he did the same to him, days ago.

C's fingers are steady, but Gingetsu can see the way his mouth is set, and he knows what C will say before he does.

"I'm sorry," Ran finises with the bandages and looks up at him, green eyes the same shade as his or as Oruha's, the same shade that the Four Leaf's eyes must be.

"Don't be," he answers, testing the bandages before he stands up. "You did no wrong."

C remains silent as Gingetsu walks to the door and then, he pauses and turns. "What shall I call you, from now on?"

The boy blinks, green eyes confused and cocking his head. "I..."

"Think about it and tell me."

He leaves the room.

-..-

There used to be four Two Leaves Clovers, when the project started. He was the oldest one, but he didn't get to know the other two, a girl and a boy. He only ever knew Ami, who'd scream whenever someone touched her and who'd cry and cry and cry day after day and Gingetsu would sit by the side of her bed, not touching her but being there.

Empathy was her 'gift'. She didn't last but a few weeks of the tests.

His gift is almost harmless. He knows when someone will die, and how, and when the project just started, he told the Wizards a thousand of their possible deaths for them to avoid them, if it was possible.

It was.

As they discover the other Clovers, he had told the Wizards the dates and age in which they'd die. The One Leaf, at twenty six. The Four Leaves, at fourteen. The Three Leaves had different ages all of them. One would die when he was sixteen; the other one when he was twenty six. The other one when he was sixty. 

Gingetsu doesn't know when he will die, but he starts covering his eyes all the same, before the knowledge of death of everyone around him drives him mad. Ryuu is the only person he knows which age keeps on changing and changing even though he never tells him about the thousand of times he has seen his life expectancy change.

Instead, he remembers.

Twenty six years old, and C is already twenty, for all tha the looks ten.

-..-

"Ran," C tells him one day, two weeks after he last saw A. He's already looking older than he did, his hair longer, his face starting to thin away into grace. "Is that okay?"

"If you want," Gingetsu shrugs, looking at the boy. "... Ran."

-...-

Just six months and Ran already looks fifteen, tall and thin with wistful eyes that look outside all the time, even if he never goes out, his hair pooling in a dark spill down to the middle of his back.

Gingetsu thinks he remembers a story he once heard Ami tell him, about a princess that was locked up and who threw her hair down the tower, for a beloved to save her. The prince was blind, he thinks.

"You know?" Kazuhiko says with an easy grin, somehow never questioning how fast Ran grows up. Gingetsu finds out tht he has fallen unto the rutine of Ran pouring him tea easy enough that Gingetsu had never quite thought about asking why. "I never thought you had it in you."

He raises an eyebrow.

"Though I guess you fit the whole sugar-daddy thing!" Ryuu laughs at his own joke, shaking his head.

Ran laughs behind his hand, a twinkle on his eyes that stops Gingetsu from being too annoyed. It's as good a story as any, when he can't even tell his best friend about the Clover project, about how the woman he loves has less than three years to live on.

Later that night, after Ryuu has gone back to Oruha, Ran asks him for help to cut his hair. All the time while he's doing so, Ran looks at the mirror, his eyes serious and not there.

Gingetsu keeps a lock of the long dark, black hair pressed into a handkerchief, deep inside his closet, were Ran won't ever find about it.

-...-

He presses the blade of his knife against Ran's throat out of instinct when he slides between his sheets. Ran's own surprise makes wires sprout from the lamp and wrap themselves around his neck and arms, just about to snap him into pieces.

"I'm sorry," Ran says, withdrawing first, for all that, as a Three Leaves, he doesn't need to apologize. "I didn´t mean to scare you."

Gingetsu nods, wishing he could reach for his dark glasses, so that he'd stop looking at the way the numbers keep on running out of Ran's life not changing, never changing even if he'd want to.

Ran reaches a hand to his face and brushes his fingertips over his jaw, down over his neck and down to his heart, as if listening to something there. Ran keeps his hand pressed against his heart before he leans forward against him, his forehead against his neck.

Gingetsu wonders what he'd do if Ran decided to kiss him, and decides that he doesn't care to think about it. There's no use in pretending, after all.

"Can I sleep with you?" Ran asks in a whisper. He's trembling. Gingetsu realizes he's holding Ran against him before he even thinks about it, too used to his presence after just six months.

Gingetsu doesn't answer, not in words, but he shifts over his single bed, arm still wrapped about Ran and he pulls the covers closer to the boy, letting Ran to be the one to turn off the lights. Ran holds unto him and it's a long time, before Gingetsu manages to fall asleep, even if he keeps his eyes closed.

Perhaps pretending is all they have left, anyway.


End file.
